The teaching process can be most effective when the teacher is able to determine how well a particular concept is being received, or what student knowledge is. Traditionally, a teacher could test student comprehension by asking a question to the class, and then wait for a volunteer to answer, or simply ask a student to respond whether the student wants to respond or not. However, a reluctance to speak out in class may not be an indication of a lack of understanding, and as a method can be slow and incomplete, feasibly measuring only the understanding of a few selected students within normal time constraints.
Conventional electronic or computer-based methods for assessing student knowledge have made it possible to quickly receive feedback from an entire class in response to a question at a same time. However, this speed is only made possible by requiring the questions posed to the class to be in a particular form with limited response options, such as multiple choice or true/false questions. While such simple questions are easy to evaluate, they do not provide a very accurate measure of depth-of-understanding. Multiple choice questions can prompt the student with the correct answer they otherwise would not have remembered, and random guesses can be indistinguishable from a response coming from a deep mastery of the subject.
Furthermore, conventional electronic solutions may be costly, ranging from about $2,500-$5,000 (USD) depending on how the system is setup and the class size. In addition, such systems often require a lot of training and configuration before they are operational and are being used efficiently. Other commercially available educational systems that can run using existing devices, such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets, have also been made available to accept responses to multiple choice questions. Examples of commercially available systems included: Poll Everywhere, Top Hat, Infuse Learning, Quiz Socket, Kahoot, Verso, Secretive, and Mentimeter.